I accidentally finished Maid Latte today. I ran out of ways to draw out the romance that can never be, and there they were at the airport. I do love the ending. I can’t even explain how much I love the ending.

All told, I wrote 13,511 words of Maid Latte during Nanowrimo. Not all of it will make it to Wattpad. I’m thinking two thirds, but I’d be happy with half of it being final. That’s the lot of the writer, I guess.

Course, now I’m all worked up to write a serious version of this. Especially since I kind of got permission to write a serious version. Actually, it wasn’t even permission. When I told the person responsible (or so I like to say) for all this that I was 40K words deep in a story based on my trip to Japan, his exact words were, “That’s legit!” And his orders were, “Better make it an emotional journey. Ups and downs, tear jerker.” And right now I have so many ideas for working Maid Latte into a tragic romance.

I’m getting a bit carried away now. I don’t write romances. I write anti-romances. For example, in my novel, the love interest of the main character is dead. (Not sexy ghost dead. Properly dead.)

The serious version has a similar setup: a British guy moving to Japan to teach English at a school that specializes in the Queen’s English. He meets a girl who is half Asian (haven’t decided what kind yet: Japanese since she’s in Japan, or Filipino like me). I came up with alternatives to Dan being a YouTuber and everything. I’m leaning toward keeping Dan as a name, since I’m obviously not using Alex’s real name (or even the name Alex) because Charlie was just as much Alex as Dan was. Dan and Charlie (in the Maid Latte version, and most likely in the serious version) were an indiscernible mix of me and Alex in no equal proportion. Certain quotes I pulled from my diary of the trip were attributed to Dan because Alex said them, and some to Charlie because Charlie is more like Alex than Dan is.

I have passed the point of making sense, I think. Nanowrimo is getting to me. But the Dan of the serious version will not be Dan Howell, and I guess that will change a lot of things. I won’t get to play with ideas like, Dan is afraid of the dark. Or, Dan talks to himself. Or, Dan stays up on Tumblr until three in the morning. The serious Dan will probably be a lot more like Alex than the fanfiction Dan was. Which will be interesting to write.

I think, I just don’t want to let go of this story. (Hence the title of this blog.) I started this story in January, and I’ve worked on it on and off all year. It’s going to be weird not having this story to fall back on when I can’t think of anything else to write. I’m going to miss my therapy writing. But you know what? That just means I need to write a fanfiction in which Phil goes to Japan and meets an appropriately tempting female. (I feel like both of Phan would be attracted to slightly off things in girls, since whether or not they’re even attracted to girls is the subject of intense debate.)

All of that being said, if you’re interested in this story, and you don’t mind a lot of cussing (not my fault), you can read what’s posted so far of Maid Latte right here.